by CB Colin
Chapter V
The Pact
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Angell frozen, she just faded away, and the world around her was spinning dizzily. She was much ill then how she was couple of minutes ago, felting a stab in her heart, like her mother just took a long and very sharp knife and stabbing her, twisting it in the most brutal way.
The freshly young autumn wind, stopped blowing, shutting in a loyal sign for her. The girl’s hand was terrible shaking on the thick oak trunk, where she was hiding to lurk, finding the cruel truth about her father. Wasn’t surprising at all that the man was very familiar too her, when they were sharing the same DNA, and somewhere inside her, she was regretting that she had to assist at the two cousin’s fight, like wanting to know nothing. She felt like she just lived in a lie until now, and her usual life wasn’t like she known to be. Her face got white because of the angry mixed with a consuming sadness, which little by little was conquering every small part of her body.
And the only question which came by was why?
Why Amira hide from her that cruel and curst truth for 20 years? Why Lovin didn’t say a word, knowing clearly that he was speaking with his daughter. No! She couldn’t believe it! Was too absurd and white sewing! Was no doubt a nightmare, and when she will awake in her big and fluffy bed, will laugh with tears by that dream which fortunately wasn’t true. She pinched herself distrustful, and the pinch from her arm felt it like a small regret.
And without a warning, she suddenly turned away, heading back to the tent, where the party was on, and the tears were falling softly, innocent, slipping smooth on her silky angelic cheeks. She really didn’t want to cry, to sigh for the unjust made; she just wanted to put an end to this, to revenge. She couldn’t see anything in front of her eyes, only the tent which was getting closer by the minute she was walking. She tripped in her crazy walk, because of the high hills. She took them off from her feet, getting up again, starting to walk like a derailment train.
“Look, it’s Angell. My God, she looks like she just killed someone.” Mariuss said. Serena immediately got up, taking Lania with her. Emell was seating next to Mariuss, watching Angell with worry, which stopped in one place, looking inflamed around, and searching for Lovin.
“Angell, are you ok?” Serena asked worried, avoiding such possible the visual contact with her.
“I’m… fine.” The girl managed to say between her teeth.
Lania opened her mouth to say something, but she was stopped by Serena. Was better for them to not intervene, knowing Angell too much, when she was seeing red before her eyes.
“Then… we will wait you at the table.” Serena said, and with Lania after her, they ran back to the round table.
The green and thunderbolt girl’s eyes fell upon Lovin, who was drinking relaxed at the bar. She was heading to him, with her hair ruffled and her makeup destroyed because of the tears. The man saw her, and turned his face to hers, not understanding why Angell was looking like she was about to explode.
“Angell, are you feeling better?” He asked smiling, thinking that her mood was because of too much drinks she had and didn’t expect receiving a soundly slap from the girl.
He watched her confused; trying so hard to understand what was going on.
“Angell, why you did this?”
The girl started to laugh false and loudly. She just loved the fact that he was so naive and shield less. Lovin made big eyes, frighten. Then she came back to her initial mood, looking more horrible then before, with an evil smile on her face.
“I will tell you what it’s going on, FATHER!” She started to raise the tone, taking care to emphasize the last word.
The music stopped, and the people around started to watch the all thing very curiously. Marvell got up on his feet, wanting to interfere but Serena stopped him, making a sign with her head that was not a good idea. Mariuss was looking through the eyebrows to the scene and whispered to Lania, which was seating next to him.
“What a beautiful family reunion.” He said ironically, but he was immediately nudged by the girl, who didn’t find that situation funny.
Amira and Sabrina came along from the forest, and the first mentioned darkest fears, came alive under her smooth and gentle doe eyes.
Lovin remained shocked by the word spoken by Angell, not knowing how to proceed further, to deny what his 20 years daughter said or to run away for the second time from their lives, from the girl which once he loved the most, and the result of their love, seating in front of him. Because of his silence, and to make matters worse, he bends his head in front of the girl. Angell anger, seemed that it touched the maximum level, and the girl didn’t remember when she was so angry in her life on someone, and by the minute another tsunami could come, more strongly than before with hard words, and maybe with stinging slaps. She just wanted to fight with him, to scream one to each other, but he was quiet like the rest of the wedding people, which were looking at the scene with interest. The girl was flowing, and Lovin raised his looks and she saw scared, that in his sparkling green eyes were tears.
“I am sorry.” He said with a voice came from the tomb, whispered, only she to hear.
Angell pulled back, looking around, and for the first time she saw that everybody was following her. She was blocked, her mind just freeze, was like the time just suddenly stopped, and the anger was quick replaced with a searing sadness, which was starting to grow in the poor girl’s mind.
She turned suddenly on heels and saw her mother, crying stoned, near here being Sabrina which was drying her eyes with a napkin. The woman throws a look to her daughter, like I am sorry, but the girl was getting easily anger thinking that a part of the guilty was on her side as well, just because she hide the damn truth in all this years, thinking that every time when Angell asked her mother about her father, she became sad saying that he died before she was born. For Amira, Lovin was like a dead person, and the girl was feeling sorry for her mother, for the fact that she was pulled off by the sneaky joker who was dressed in black suite.
Angell thrown Amira a gaze full of compassion and mercy, then she took treadle, running on the wet grass, barefoot, without a certain direction, far away from the party, far away from her mother and her friends, far away from the world which she known to be warm.
“Angell!” Marvell yelled after her, but was stopped again by Serena.
“Trust me Marvel, she will come back. Leave her alone.”
Marvell wanted to say couple of sweet things to Serena, but he pleased himself just to look unpleasant to her.
The girl was in the forest, running chaotically, starting to climb a small wooded hill, and more she was reaching the center of the woods, more the forest went wild. The branches were hurting her, scratching her delicate legs, leaving pink lines on it. The fallen trunks like the fallen soldiers from the battle field, were tripping her to run further away, but still the girl don’t gave up that easily, jumping over them, and trying to keep distance from all the obstacle which came into the picture, crying without breathing. She was so hurt, that she didn’t know if she will ever escape that pain.
God hated her; she wanted to believe that, He was laughing from the skies about the destiny He putted on her life way. Where has Angell Valentine Veriss disappeared, the graceful, rebel and ambitious girl? All the time with the smile on her red lips, and prepared to jump into the rescue when someone needed help?
“SHE DIED!” Angell yelled, falling on the dry and muddy autumn leaves, sobbing.
She took away the hair strand from her face, of her brown light hair full of small branches and leaves. Her purple dress was awful spotted with mud, and her purse was entirely gone, forgetting it on the table from the tent, together with the safe feeling as well.
She looked into the empty space, stopping crying for a moment, having her face streaked by the tears and messy because of the flowed mascara, thinking that if Sabrina wouldn’t came in the town, who was presuming that she was her aunt, when actually she was her
mother’s cousin, none of this would not have happened, and Angell was starting to believe that in life nothing is random, and to stop at the thought that there is a destiny for each and every human. She stood couple of minutes in her knee, meditating, and then she got up and started her journey to unknown, climbing.
She didn’t want consolations from no one, or to cry on a cold and foreign shoulder. Maybe Amira expected her to cry because of the sadness not anger, even if she felt that knife from her heart softly retreating, stinging.
All of the sudden she started to laugh, stopping again. She was effective laughing about what happened that night, although the girl’s laugh wasn’t calm and happy, but cold and ironic. What would have happen if? Or better said, what her mother and the others were expecting from her to do? For Angell to jump happily in the air that she just met her father for the first time? That rotten worm wasn’t her father, was just an impostor who decided to come in the picture, to deflect the usual and beautiful course of her life. According to Doriss, Lovin was working with him on the continent and brought Lovin here to his wedding with Sabrina, and Angell got angry again at the thought that Lovin wasn’t brought in Moonlight, like a usual guest, and the lie was bigger because Angell knew that Doriss, Sabrina and Lovin were living in Sareville.
She putted her hand on a tree, and the other one on her hip, abruptly breathing. She got tired, blown from so much climbing, not knowing what direction to take, and above all that she really didn’t care.
“Let’s resume.” She said to herself. “My mother and Lovin were lovers in Sunshine, and then because of a mistake I end up coming in this world in Moonlight. So cool! Now I’m a mistake. I can tell people, if they will ask my name, I will tell them: Hi, my name is Mistake Veriss, nice to meet you.” She ended up with sarcasm.
She shacked her head couple of times like she wanted to forget that painful perspective, but in reality she shacked it only to escape the little branches from her hair, taking them with her hand.
“My beautiful hair. What a plight you are in.”
Then she started climbing again. But then what actually was the truth with Amira and her daughter? Why Amira claimed that aunt Creselda was in fact grandmother Creselda.
“Where the devil am I?”
After a while she realized the fact that she got lost. The knife, brutally stabbed in her heart, retreated for good, leaving a wound which slowly would heel in time, and transform into a scar.
She was looking around, getting use to the dark, even though the sky was full of stars. After what she was seeing, she climbed so much that she ended in a dry small glade. In front of the forest, was another one, much dense and gnarly than the other one, and Angell didn’t dare to take that direction. Then she looked in the left side, seeing the whirling sea, and on the horizon, purple and dark blue clouds were crowding on the sky, dropping lightings, and she realized that she was on a cliff. The fear settle quickly, and the girl looked around desperately, couldn’t find an escape way. Now she really cares, and the alcohol euphoria effect evaporated with some time before.
A sharp voice screamed, growing in intensity and was so loud that Angell collapsed in her knees, because of fearing, with her palms on ears, screaming as well as the voice in the same time, with her eyes closed.
Then she was just hearing her own scream, stopping, quickly getting up, being afraid that the thing which produced that scream will find her. She turned away, and saw the forest from which she came, being afraid to go back.
Therefore she tried to run and woke up in front of a gulf with sharp edges. But not this fact was amazing, but the cave from its base. Was like a bear lair only that in reality was ten times larger and spooky.
What if in that cave was the home of a wild creature, cruel, which was jumping at the victim as soon as he felt it getting closer?
But the storm was closer, becoming more violent by the minute. Angell worship, praying that she will not die in that way, closing her eyes, and asked God for forgiveness because she insulted Him (“ God was hating her”), and entered with her eyes closed inside of the cave, feeling her feet painfully, because of the spikes from the forest and the rocks from that cave. The darkness was stabbed by a pale blue ray, from another chamber. Even if Angell couldn’t estimate how big the cave was, because she didn’t saw the ceiling. She could smell something horrible like something or someone died there a long time ago, and the noise made by the stalactites were giving Angell creeps. Sometimes she could hear fluttering wings, and the girl prayed to not wake up with a bat in her hair.
She was expecting that in every second, something to come out from the dark and to destroy her, but for her relief, this didn’t happen, walking furtherer towards that blue ray.
Makin courage (whispering to her mad subconscious that everything is fine) she walked forward even more, seeing that the cave was starting to get smaller and in one point she had to lean easily, putting her hand on the cave’s walls, felting a moisture like a gelatinous slime.
Arrived to the “door” of the other chamber, from which the blue ray was coming, she observed that it was narrow, and filled by the curiosity, the girl managed hardly to sneak in that chamber, but she remained stoned, discovering the source of the blue pale ray.
The rocky chamber was huge, having the size of a football oval stadium. From the cave’s ceiling, strongly blue light was coming, like above the cliff was a spinning blue star. But not the refreshing light was amazing, who was lighting the entire chamber, but the secret sanctuary’s “population”.
Angell expected to find forest animals, anything, but not that. The population wasn’t animals, or humans, or mythical creatures, but plants; most precisely, flowers. But not every kind of flower from the island (which held all the species expect one), seemed like the minus from the flower rank were truly existed, but in secret, living in that cave. Over one thousand Forget-me-not flowers were covering the chamber’s floor, like it was a translucent blue carpet, waved like by a cold breeze, as like the fields of wheat. And in the middle of the blue flowers, on a huge rock, was the biggest flower of Forget-Me-Not, having its roots very thick, which surrounded that rock all over it. Another unexplainable thing was that the flowers were moving (she thought initially that they were directed by a pale of wind or something), and the girl could hear pleasant buzzing coming from all over the place. But even the flower from the rock, having the size of a human baby, had life, and how she was seating there quietly, suddenly she turns her petals towards Angell, making the girl thrilling.
“Human! What are you doing here?”
Angell wasn’t scared any longer, was simple terrified; she was looking around the chamber like a crazy person, trying to find out the source of the authoritative voice, smooth, like a strong whisper, with a weak echo.
“I asked you, what are you doing here?” The voice said once more.
The other flowers stopped whispering, and like the huge flower, they drive their attention towards Angell, changing a little bit the “rug”. The girl remained literately with her mouth opened, discovering the source. Was the flower from the rock, which had her petals fixed on her. She couldn’t say if that event was real or a dream.
“I… I’m… actually…” Angell tried something to say, but she was stuttering very badly, because of the fear.
“Come closer!” The flower commanded.
Angell blinked for couple of times, but then she lower on some rocky stairs, stepping on the freshly made path by the little blue flowers, which they were feared to be stepped on. Angell was looking straight ahead, and felt it like she was in a flower blue sea, approaching the rock from the middle, like an island. When finally she arrived there in front of the huge flower, the girl had to look up like to a tree. Then she realized that the flower’s petals were like her palms.
“What is your name?”
“Angell Valentine Veriss.”
“And tell me, Angell Valentine Veriss, how come you are so sorrow? I can sense your soul burning in
side.”
“I have issues.” The girl said, bending her head.
“I understand. I am aware of your story, my sweet child, and maybe from tonight on, the fortune can be yours, as the wheel turns in your favor.”
Angell frown her eyebrows, watching again the flower.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I only can tell you that I have the power to fulfill you a single wish, the most deeply and powerful one. But for this, you have to do something for me in exchange.”
“What exactly?” The girl asked calm, being interested.
“Be mindful. You have to take me away from the place, then to plant me in yours.”
“In mines? What do you mean?” Angell asked confused.
“Your place, where you live.”
“Oh, I’ve got it.” Angell said, automatically thinking at her enormous yard.
“And pay careful Angell Valentine Veriss. You have to not forget to wet me in the day three from the calendar, with salty water took from the sea, before the dawn. You will make three steps, and from there you can collect water.
“You mean every Wednesday? I have to do this for the rest of my life?” She asked a little terrified thinking at the early mornings, when she was sleeping the best.
“Not all the rest of your human life, only until 14 full moons will pass. In the night when the third full moon will be up on the sky, your wish will be alive. We were cursed by the island goddess, to live far away from humans, in this cave. And any human who will take us from here, will have the supreme nightmare that is why you have to make tea out of us, harvesting flowers when the moon will raise up, do not pick flowers on day light, otherwise the effect will be no longer useful for your protection.”
Angell thought that all of this were supposed to be a huge joke, but didn’t say a word, even if questions, one after another, were crowding in her head. Who was actually the Goddess; even if Angell could swear that she read legends about her before.
A lot of whishes passed her mind, like a strong torrent. From family, to success but still, in that moment, she just wished to disappear from everybody’s life.
“So, do you want to make a pact with me?” The flower asked her.
“Yes. I do.” The girl said very decided.
She took action without thinking, like she was hypnotized. She climbed the rock, hardly, grabbing the flowers thick roots, and then she grabbed with both hands the flower’s stem and pulled. A strongly roars, like a thunder, filled the chamber like Angell just launched a grenade. The small blue flowers around, which were forming that carpet, dried suddenly, disappearing one by one like a grand domino.
After a couple of minutes, Angell woke up in the torrential rain from outside the cave, with the blue flower in her arms, which started to get smaller and smaller until a kernel.